Planet Photoshop

Creating Reusable Diagonal Guides

If you’ve used Photoshop’s rulers at all, you know that you have your choice of either a vertical or horizontal guide. That’s not a bad thing, but there’s one thing missing—a diagonal guide. Since Photoshop doesn’t have one, here’s a tip for making your own: Start by clicking the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers palette, then double-click on your Foreground color swatch and in the resulting Color Picker, set it to R: 161, G: 253, B: 253 (the color Photoshop uses for its built-in guides). Switch to the Line tool found in the Shapes tools (Shift-U until it comes up), and on this new layer draw a diagonal line where you want your guide to appear (make sure you have Fill Pixels icon selected in the Options Bar). It’s not a bad idea to copy that layer into a separate document and save it on your drive—so anytime you need a diagonal line, you can just open that document and drag it right in.

Posted by Corey Barker

Corey is the newest education and curriculum developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He is a graduate of the Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, Fl, with a degree in Illustration. Over the years, Corey has worked as a graphic artist in a variety of disciplines such as illustration, commercial design, large format printing, motion graphics, web design and photography. His expertise in Photoshop and Illustrator have earned him numerous awards in illustration, graphic design and photography. Using Photoshop since Version 2, his expertise and creativity have evolved exponentially with every new version, which makes Corey an invaluable addition to the NAPP team.

4 comments on “Creating Reusable Diagonal Guides

  1. thank you! i’ve been trying to make angled guides so I can easily make perspectives, and this should be awesome for it!
    I also love how simple it is. again, thanks!